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David Malin: The nature of Science is to be uncertain.
Although, we find out things about the universe around us, they often change.
For instance Newton defied the laws of gravity really well.
Those laws worked beautifully to lob spacecrafts to planets all around the solar system but they're not the full picture it was Einstein that
uncovered the full picture that included gravity and time in the equation.
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Student: So what inspired you to become an astronomer?
David Malin: Well, the basic bottom line is I wanted a job but before I became an astronomer I was a chemist, a research chemist in a
large industrial chemical company in Northern England.
And there I started to use microscopes to understand chemical problems and in those days when you use microscopes you use photography to record the data.
So I became knowledgeable about photography and then we got an electro microscope and other fancy gear that all use photography as the recording media.
So, after awhile with my chemical background and this physics stuff I was, I suppose I could call myself a photographic scientist.
When the Anglo-Australian Observatory started up here in Australia in 1975 they were looking for a photographic scientist and I was ready
for a change so, I joined the Observatory as its photographic scientist.
But when it got going it was such a fabulous place that almost anybody could make discoveries with a telescope and I made a few
and so I gradually got promoted up the ladder to be called an astronomer.
But my underpinnings are image Science.
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Student: What brought an English astronomer to Australia?
David Malin: Ah, well I married an Australian in England and we settled down there, we had a family there.
But when I was ready to come to Australia it's perfect to have an Australian wife who spoke the language you know and so when I
arrived there wasn't any kind of integration difficulties because although I mean England and Australia appeared to be similar kinds of places in fact there are many subtle differences.
When you move from one to the other you realise that Australians are not like Brits, they're Australians and it's a very good thing,
I very much like it but the early stages are quite tricky.
But there was this marvellous telescope that had been built here and it was looking for somebody like me to do the imaging Science part of things, that's why I came.
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Student: How did you come up with your astro-imaging technique?
David Malin: In my life as a chemist I was interested in the mechanisms of photography, how the whole thing worked,
how you could put a piece of film in a camera and out would pop a colour picture and I found out all about that.
So, I knew that images were made from three separate layers, each recording the red, green or blue light.
And when I was faced with the problem in astronomy of how to make colour pictures when there was never enough light I decided to use
the special photographic materials that were designed for astronomy, that were very sensitive to faint light but were only available in black and white.
And to take three separate black and white images in red, green and blue light and then combine them in the dark room using a layering technique to rebuild the colour images.
Nowadays, you can do that easily in a computer but in the 1970s when I was doing this in the dark room it was quite tricky.
And it employed techniques that I'd been thinking about for quite awhile using an additive process of colour photography instead of
the subtractive process that occurs in colour film.
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Student: How would you encourage a student like me into a career in astronomy?
David Malin: I should tell you that a career in astronomy's quite difficult in the sense that to be a research astronomer you need to
have a degree, preferably a Science degree, you would need to do a Masters specialising in some aspect of physics and then you'd
probably need to do a PhD as well on some physics topic.
That takes a long time and you need to be driven to do it but many people are and in fact there are more people obtain PhD's in astronomy than there are jobs available.
But they're so well trained in mathematics and physics and statistics that they get jobs in all kinds of places like financial houses and make a fortune.
Astronomers don't make a fortune, they're paid normal sort of academic salary so they're never rich in money terms but they're rich
in other ways the job is extremely satisfying.
So, if you want to do this you need to be thinking about your maths, very hard, you need to have a good grasp of physics and you need
a good deal of determination to get all the way through to a doctorate in physics or astronomy.
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Student: Can you describe some of the work you are doing to promote the International Year of Astronomy?
David Malin: Oh, yes the International Year of Astronomy is celebrating the four hundred years since Galileo first turned his
telescope to the sky and made some momentous discoveries, some Earth-changing discoveries.
And 2009 we're going to celebrate this great anniversary supported by the UN, it's going to be a big thing.
We're going to have lots of outreach activities of various kinds.
It's not for the astronomers this year, it's for the public.
So, we're going to have lots of public talks, lots of visitors, exhibitions, performances, plays, everything that will attract attention to the
cultural nature of astronomy as well as it's Scientific nature will be on in 2009.
I hope you're going to come?
Student: Of course I'll come.
David: Thank you.
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Student: What do you see as the future for astronomy in Australia?
David Malin: Well, its got a very healthy future.
Before I came to Australia in 1975 Australia was already firmly on the astronomical map partly because it was under the southern skies.
Most observatories were then in the Northern Hemisphere but also because there was a very good depth of academic astronomy going on in Australia at the time.
The Anglo-Australian Telescope which is the biggest telescope operating in the Southern Hemisphere when it was built in the 1970s
changed all that in it that it made Australia a much more suitable place, a much more attractive place to do astronomy and many more astronomers came here.
They were backed of course by the Parkes Radio Telescope that had been here since the 1960s.
Still, even now a very powerful research instrument.
But the next big thing in Australia is the Square Kilometre Array, it's a radio telescope that has a collecting area of a square kilometre,
absolutely huge but it uses very novel in fact still to be invented techniques for observing all the sky at the same time and at different wavelengths without any moving parts.
So, it's going to be a very fancy device, it's going to cost a lot of money to make and it's going to be an absolutely world class telescope.
You'll hear much more about this next year in 2009 when we're talking about the Square Kilometre Array almost everywhere we go because it is so exciting.